Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez, MY SIDE OF THE RIVER: A Memoir
[0:02]Hi, I'm Sivi Owens and I am the host of this podcast, Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:08]I am also a newly minted USA Today best-selling author of the novel, Blake.
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[0:31]Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez is the author of My Side of the River, a memoir.
[0:37]Elizabeth was born and raised in Tucson, Arizona as a second-generation immigrant.
[0:41]She graduated from high school at the top of her class and in 2018,
[0:45]graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in philosophy,
[0:48]politics and economics. She worked as a banking analyst at Wells Fargo and is now a product
[0:53]manager at a big tech company where she uses her background in knowledge to empower communities.
[0:58]She has been featured on NPR's Latino USA and delivered a viral TED Talk and finding
[1:02]opportunity and stability in the United States while examining flaws and narratives that simplify
[1:07]and idealize the immigrant experience. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
[1:11]Welcome, Elizabeth. Thank you so much for coming on Mom's Don't Have Time to Read
[1:14]Books to discuss My Side of the River, a memoir. Congratulations.
[1:19]Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. Okay, please tell listeners about My Side of the River.
[1:26]Yeah, so My Side of the River is a memoir about my upbringing in Southern Arizona,
[1:32]specifically in Tucson, which is an hour north of the U.S. Mexico border.
[1:37]And it talks about, you know, being the child of immigrants in a very immigrant
[1:44]neighborhood south of the Breida River here in Tucson. And what that was like for me,
[1:51]especially during the height of laws like SB 1070 when, you know, we were all worried about,
[1:59]you know, the show near papers and what would happen to families because of that.
[2:04]And the crux of this story really is about what happened when my parents eventually were forced
[2:09]to return to Mexico. And I was left in the United States alone with my little brother for a little
[2:16]bit and how these events kind of led me to basically become homeless and, you know, still try to
[2:24]pursue my education. And so that's the heart of the story. It's also a love story between, I think,
[2:30]a brother and sister and to my family and to the community that helped raise me.
[2:37]Is it hard to just hop on a podcast and start talking about like the most painful moments or
[2:43]the scariest moments or your entire life story? Are you okay with that now? Is it like routine now
[2:49]that you've been, you know, talking about the book? I think it'll always be a little bit uncomfortable
[2:54]regardless. It's super funny when people ask me, they're like, oh my god, you wrote a book. What is
[2:59]it about? I'm just like, oh, I just met you. Do you really wish this? It's like you want me to just
[3:05]draw my dumb, like the trumpet book. You know what I mean? Like, I'm like, it's so, it's so hard to
[3:10]explain. And it's, you know, with memoirs, you've also kind of feel like a raging narcissist the
[3:14]entire time. At least that's how I felt. And also how I felt writing it. I'd be like, oh my god,
[3:19]this is so annoying. Why am I doing this? I know, I read a memoir too. And people are like, oh,
[3:25]like your whole life story, you know, like, I thought you're supposed to be 80 years old to like
[3:30]write your memoirs or something like that. And I'm like, no, no, it's about like a piece. It's,
[3:34]you know, memoirs are about a chunk in a piece of your life. It's a chunk. And it's also like
[3:40]they, they'll, they'll ask, oh, can I get a summary? I'm like, the book is the summary. Yeah.
[3:47]I mean, if you really want a summary, then just don't even bother. Do you know, like,
[3:51]let's just go for coffee. And I'll just tell you about my life or something. Exactly.
[3:55]I love that expression, trauma dump. And I've never heard that before. And did you come up with
[4:01]that or is that like a thing that I didn't know about? I definitely didn't come up with it. But
[4:07]it is very used among my friend group because we're all traumatized.
[4:13]I love it. I mean, we're all traumatized in different ways from different things,
[4:17]at different points in our life, right? And who can get through life for that at one point,
[4:20]having to need to do it trauma dump, which now I feel like I'm using like a grandparent or
[4:25]something. But anyway, thank you for the expression. I might co-op. I mean, use it. I think it captures
[4:30]it perfectly. It really does. It really does. When you were writing the story, which part of the
[4:36]dump, should we say, which sounds terrible, was like a part that you knew we had to be out there,
[4:43]but you just like didn't really want to go there again. And now you're like, okay, it's out there,
[4:47]but yeah, I mean, initially you would think that it's the whole process of me getting the
[4:54]phone call from my mom being like, our visas were denied again. We can't come back to the
[4:58]United States. And me having to tell my little brother who was eight at the time that like,
[5:04]your mom is in dad or coming back like life as we know it is about to change. And how do you
[5:10]explain that to a child when I'm a child, right? I was 15. And even though he didn't fully
[5:18]understand the extent, he knew that it was bad. And that was heartbreaking to see, right? So that was
[5:23]really, really hard. I also think that some of the things that I really struggled with while writing
[5:29]was talking about my parents and some of the mistakes that they made, you know, I talk about domestic
[5:37]violence. And I was really worried that writing this book would end up villainizing my parents
[5:43]in some way. Because I know them. I know them as complete humans like all of their mistakes and
[5:50]all of the ways that they've tried to become better people. And my whole while writing this was,
[5:56]yes, these are really hard things that I think I need to write in this book because I know this
[6:02]is something that happens in a lot of families. And we just kind of hide it because it's so shameful.
[6:09]And I just wish that, you know, I had known that it wasn't just my family that had issues,
[6:16]right? It was all the families. And so that's why I ended up putting that and including that.
[6:21]And at the end of the day, like my hope was that people would see my family as entire humans
[6:27]with mistakes, with things that make them amazing. And, you know, collectively not shame them for
[6:34]like these bits of our past that are so hard to talk about.
[6:39]I think that's the beauty of writing the full story. You don't have to rely on a shortcut
[6:45]and make snap judgments about people you have time to let people get to know. I mean,
[6:50]everybody makes mistakes. Everybody has their things. But once you understand like the whole
[6:58]scope of it, it's much easier to, I don't know, process, understand, obviously this sounds like
[7:04]simplistic. But I really do think that's why books and stories like yours are so powerful,
[7:10]right? Because it is complex. People are complex. And I love what you said about shame.
[7:15]I mean, I'm starting to think there just aren't that many original experiences.
[7:19]You know, I feel like I talked to so many people. I'm just like everyone is convinced like you said,
[7:25]it's like we all have these things that couldn't possibly be happening to other people or you just
[7:29]don't know until you read like thousands of books that like they really do happen to lots of other
[7:34]people. Yeah, I can't use your I can't imagine reading that many books and just being like oh,
[7:41]you know, for a while I was getting a little down because I was like oh my gosh, like everyone's
[7:46]parents are terrible. I'm like my gosh, it's just so awful and everybody's home. You know, it just
[7:53]felt so bleak. But the greatest thing is the hope, right? It's the hope and the perseverance and
[7:59]overcoming and the stories that come from pain that lead to strength. This whole post-traumatic growth
[8:05]do buy into that. I think that there's always going to be some growth and learning, right? I
[8:11]have taken the best parts of my parents and the worst parts as lessons, right? To be the best version
[8:18]of myself possible, right? My mom is super confident and feisty irrespective of the people around
[8:24]her. She doesn't care about their level of education. She just shows up and argues if she thinks
[8:29]she's right. And my dad is very logical and entrepreneurial. And I love the way that he thinks and
[8:37]the way that he will solve a problem really fast. I can really rely on my dad to help solve something.
[8:45]And I think that both of those things are really important to who I am, to how I think and how I
[8:52]like try to express and show myself in the world. And I'm 28, right? So I'm still quite junior
[8:59]everything that I do with my role and my job. And I try to like bring that confidence, that like
[9:05]way of thinking and logic and entrepreneurial mind that my dad would have or that my mom would
[9:10]every day to what I do. And, you know, I still struggle, but it's like these lessons are so ingrained
[9:16]to me just by virtue of being their daughter. So interesting. Well, I watched your whole TED talk
[9:21]and you were so confident. And I know, I'm like, oh, she's just like hanging out in a sweatshirt today.
[9:27]Because you're like, you know, just on fire. And so self-assured and poised and articulate about
[9:35]all the things with immigration and your points of view and all of it. I mean, I know we all have
[9:41]both sides of ourselves that, you know, when we're like performing essentially. And when we're
[9:45]just like being a steep us, you know, but tell me more about the TED dog and preparing for that. And
[9:52]the way that has changed your life and having millions of people viewing your speech and listening
[9:58]to your jokes.
[10:00]Yeah, it's so funny that you say that I'm an introvert at heart and a lot of people will see the TED Talk or we'll see how I act in like certain settings.
[10:10]And I'm like, no, it's like I turned that version of myself on and as it's off, I'm completely depleted.
[10:16]I just get my control into a ball and like not anybody for like a couple of days, right?
[10:22]To just regain that energy. But giving that TED Talk was so fun. It was so exciting. It changed my life in a lot of ways.
[10:30]I was a very junior analyst at Wells Fargo and I hated my job.
[10:37]It was like, I felt like I was dipping my head in concrete every single day.
[10:41]Oh, my God.
[10:43]It was like, I was like the creative side of me is dying. And my coworkers weren't amazing. They weren't great at all.
[10:51]And I really always felt like I was at risk in that role. I was like, I am just, you know, if there is a pile of people that need to go so that they can hire their best friend.
[11:03]Or like an hypnotism, baby. Like I'm probably at the top just because of who I am, because they don't like me.
[11:10]Even if I do everything right, even if I get all of the analysts to like me and the work that I do, they will find a reason, right?
[11:18]And so I knew that to make myself safer. I needed to be loud. I needed to be present. I needed to make it really hard for them to fire me.
[11:27]And there was, you know, on our company website, this collaboration that Wells had with the TED Institute and essentially the TED Institute will go to different companies.
[11:38]And they will like do the whole TED talk that is done by TED. It's not TEDx with like usually people from these companies and out of like 1300 people.
[11:50]I got selected and I was really happy about it because I was like, I'd rather I speak because I have something to say versus one of my random white coworkers who have nothing to say ever.
[12:03]At least from my perspective.
[12:05]And so that's kind of how I got the TED talk.
[12:08]And then I got us a coach to kind of help craft my story. I already had an idea of what I wanted to say, but the coach is really cool because it helped me clean things up emphasize what you need to.
[12:19]And then when you actually go up on stage, you don't have telepromters. You don't have a speech. It's all memorized.
[12:26]And you go up and you see a bunch of people and you just have to go for it.
[12:30]And then my mic cut out in between and luckily like they were able to cut that out and I got right back into it.
[12:36]And I wasn't forgetting things, which is amazing because I really only memorized it. I think like the day before because I'm just a terrible procrastinator.
[12:46]And the TED talk was amazing. It got a lot of virality, which was really cool.
[12:50]It was presented at the company like website and it made my coworkers really mad.
[12:55]But it was so fun for me because I was able to, you know, share my story in a way that was compact that I think that people could take something away from it.
[13:07]And, you know, I really I really struggled to with the memoir because people are like, well, what do I take away from the memoir and I sometimes don't know.
[13:16]Because I was when I was writing it was like up to date and I'm just like, I'm still lost, but every day I'm trying to be as normal as possible and not let these like circumstances of my background be the sole defining thing that I am.
[13:29]And so, you know, I think that the TED talk was we have these super immigrants and then we have these immigrants that people use escape goats.
[13:39]And my whole I guess thesis of it was that we're all on some spectrum and it doesn't matter where we are.
[13:46]We all deserve this baseline of human respect.
[13:50]Do you I'm curious. I don't know why I mean, the coworkers and your relationship with them.
[13:56]What was that about?
[13:58]Like, was it just you or was it a group of people and they were mean to select people?
[14:04]Like what was that culture?
[14:05]It was just one I was the only Latino on the trading floor except for another lady who was amazing and she was a secretary.
[14:14]And there was this perception of the woman that worked on this team. It was a team primarily made up of women, which at first I thought this is amazing.
[14:24]I was like, I'll have mentors. I'll have people that support me because women have been under represented and banking too.
[14:31]But what I learned is that these women have been in the industry for quite a while.
[14:35]And their mentality was only one of us can exist.
[14:39]And so it kind of felt like I was a threat because I didn't really go into the mold of who they were.
[14:46]I wasn't, you know, drinking the corporate cool aid in the way that they wanted to be too.
[14:51]Or had that quote unquote sense of urgency that they felt that I lacked.
[14:56]And, you know, I was 23 when I started this role.
[15:01]And I was also coming in not just as a fresh analyst, but as the new guardian to my 16 year old brother.
[15:10]And so I was working this entry level role, which initially is, you know, you take up the slack for everybody.
[15:17]You do the groundwork, which takes a lot of time and a lot of, you know, presence.
[15:22]And I was also calling my brother school and be like, you need to put him in AP classes.
[15:27]I don't like what you guys are doing. Can you support him? He needs English Spanish learning assistance and doing all of these things that nobody would expect is 23 year old to do.
[15:38]They weren't going to understand that ever.
[15:41]They were just going to see that as a fault to my ability to perform.
[15:45]And at the end of the day, I was performing.
[15:48]I was writing everything down that I did that I succeeded at in like a document just for safety.
[15:54]And at the end of the day, it didn't even matter because when they made up their mind, they made up their mind that I just wasn't cut out for that kind of position.
[16:05]That was great. It wasn't great. It's also super interesting because.
[16:10]Wells Fargo, specifically, they got their investment banking portion after the 2008 financial crisis.
[16:18]And they bought out wokovia.
[16:21]And so a lot of people that they hired were these very old school bankers that essentially got fired from like Lehman brothers and Bearster and all these companies that dissolved.
[16:31]And so the environment there is very old school in a way that I would walk into it and I would be like, did I just go back a couple of decades as far as like what's going on or is this just how the banking world is in general.
[16:45]Do you ever feel.
[16:46]Have you seen the movie bad moms such a random question you probably haven't because you're not a mom, but I haven't but I think I've seen.
[16:54]it out previews when I'm like scrolling through this.
[16:58]This is just an example, but there was like a group of you know sort of alpha women in bad moms, particularly like the head of the PTA who is like just so awful.
[17:09]And really once like this, you know, sort of the heroine of the bad moms like go away and she wants to rule her kingdom and you know, she feels threatened and she lashes out and she's just terrible.
[17:21]And then we find out at the end of the movie that like her whole life is actually falling apart and the act that she's putting on her husband's been accused of insider trading or something bad was going on and.
[17:33]Her life is falling apart they had no money like everything was awful and she just like couldn't.
[17:38]But you would never know right except for this last scene so I wonder not to defend in any way shape or form like the people I've no idea anything about their stories but I just always wonder when people really are really mean are they really just mean which some people aren't you know it is their bad apples what are you going to do.
[17:57]Are they hiding other things that they're ashamed of do they have shameful things that they've like put up such a like is that why they become.
[18:04]narcissists or whatever I don't know I just sometimes wonder no I also wonder to I mean I was I was like is this a cultural thing that I've just never been exposed to is this just how things are and I think when you're.
[18:17]So young going into a position like this, you don't really realize right away that people are treating you bad.
[18:23]You're just like oh this is just how things are and so it took a while to find mentors and to find allies in the company that told me from a bit of an outside perspective know this team is notoriously bad it has a.
[18:39]And when I saw that they put you on that team I was worried about you so I'm glad that we connected and oh my gosh you know I also tried to think like why would they.
[18:51]be acting in this and what I realized about that specific team in that role that I was in was that there was very difficult growth opportunities sure you would eventually like rise up the ranks and get paid more but the role itself stay pretty consistent.
[19:04]And the opportunities I think I don't remember if it was one of my coworkers who told me this but they were like yeah you either Mary one of the CEOs that you work with.
[19:15]And so that's what I heard and up working as you know investor relations for one of these like top 500 companies and both of those options I was 23 I was like that's.
[19:28]Really like I hate this so much I was like how do I get out of this and it was true because when I was looking for jobs like trying to get out I like these were the only things that I could basically apply to besides the marrying average CEO which you know now I realized maybe I should have done that because.
[19:44]they're still time they're still time and.
[19:52]But I was like I was like 23 right getting 23 24 and I was like oh like this is really what you have to tell this is so.
[20:00]This is terrible archaic and just like terrible thinking like there was no incentive to grow me as a person career wise.
[20:09]And I wondered if they felt some type of way to still be there after so many years and not really have growth.
[20:16]Yeah. Well, I wonder what happened to that whole division doesn't sound like it was really poised for success.
[20:20]I think you're still there. I think every bank has one, but who knows.
[20:24]Yeah, whatever, but now you work at Facebook or something and you, right? Did I get that wrong? Where do I work? I work at meta.
[20:32]I can't talk a lot about what I work and actually do, but I am a product manager, which is super fun because I get to be a bit more entrepreneurial, right?
[20:41]Like I get a section of the company that I get to work on and I get to think about the product, right? And the apps that we use.
[20:49]And I'm like, hmm, this user experience kind of sucks. And then I can think about different ways to work with my team to improve that experience.
[20:59]And, you know, I'm a junior product manager still. I still think of myself as that because I just feel like I have so much to learn.
[21:06]But I love the fact that people at this company are very willing to teach me like the environment is very different than what it was before in the sense that there are opportunities for mentorship and for growth.
[21:19]And that people want you to succeed because it keeps us moving and it keeps us innovating and iterating. And I think that that kind of environment is just so much more well suited for my type of brain.
[21:31]I have like ADHD and so like I need like a constant change and challenge. So it's super fun for me. I also like that I can get my parents and be like, oh, like, this is when I'm working on and they'll actually understand.
[21:46]Because sometimes they don't know what I'm doing. Like they didn't know what I was doing in baking and I would be like basically a babysitting rich people. And they'd be like, oh, okay. And, you know, with Facebook, I can open the app and like show them. I'm like, I added this button. And that was me.
[22:01]What advice do you have for aspiring authors. What advice do I have for aspiring authors. Look, I got into the writing world in a very weird way. Right. I gave the TED talk.
[22:14]I had some agents reach out to me. And I somehow got agented and ended up with a book deal. It felt crazy. It felt super random.
[22:25]But what I do think is important. And that I wish maybe I would have done earlier is just to always be writing short things and putting your work out there. Because what I've seen of a lot of authors that are really successful.
[22:40]Is that they've started to build their rent in one way or another. They have written things on LinkedIn. They've put their word and their stories out there in some capacity.
[22:50]And I think that that helps you become a bit more established.
[22:54]So that when it comes to the point where you're like, okay, I think I want to agent or I want to self publish. You kind of have a foundation already. And like a collection of work that can be used or that can be iterated on.
[23:08]Just putting it out there. I think it's super important. I really struggled to with writing because I wanted it to sound perfect.
[23:16]And at some points you just have to put things out there and see what sticks. You have to let it go. But that's my advice for people that want to write. I also think that it's super romanticized. It's a super difficult area to be in.
[23:30]I don't know how authors do it full time. I really respect that because I think it's such a difficult process to write a book.
[23:39]I agree.
[23:41]Well, Elizabeth, thank you so much. I have so much respect for all that you've been through and the fact that you could write about it.
[23:50]So young and, you know, to even have the perspective on what's happened already to reflect and, you know, trauma dump for all of us. So anyway, I dressed for your cover. You're welcome.
[24:03]Anyway, you have a great day. And thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much for having me. Okay, my pleasure. Take care.
[24:10]Thank you so much.
[24:12]Bye bye.
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[24:21]zippy Owens and at zippy readers.